Bullcrap ... a bit strong
you certainly do get large tailrotor thrust variations when the aircraft is flying through the air slowly (15kts ish) in the same direction as the tail rotor is blowing air. This has been attributed to TR VR but it may not actually be the case, it may be just that thrust variations result from the tail rotor encountering it's wake. There is (should be) of course no difficulty in applying pedals as required to maintain heading, inputs may need to be nimble and authoritative, but there is likely to be lot's of Tail Rotor Authority to achieve what is required.
Pilot have historically been surprised by the response of the tail rotor and sometimes crash as a result (as we have seen with one of our poster's EC120.) (should they hang up their certificate or just get with the program as far as Authoritative tail rotor control is concerned?)
Another frequent cause of the mis-nomer (LTE) has been inadvertently having a negative airspeed and being surprised by natural weathercocking, as the helicopter yaws beyond the comprehension of the pilot.
It is fair to call these other versions of LTE Lack of Tailrotor Education, same nemonic, different problem (more pilot related). LTEd
Apart from countering torque the other use of a tail rotor is do fly the aircraft sideways or backwards through the air. If the tail rotor is not powerful enough to do this then it doesn't have sufficient authority to achieve the sideways flight intended, this just means it won't do it, the helicopter will default into wind with lot's of margin available to control the more into wind result.